


Tears

by WahlBuilder



Series: Languages of Love [11]
Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Dandolo being Dadolo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Bonding, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21606727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Dandolo and Niesha have a heart-to-heart.
Relationships: Dandolo | Merchant Prince & Niesha (Technomancer)
Series: Languages of Love [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1277777
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Tears

The staples groan precariously under Dandolo’s feet: he is always aware of his bulk, but not always aware the world is mostly built for people smaller than him. That some places are not fit for him in the most physical sense. He tries to step lighter. The pipe holds—it will hold for hundreds of years, with the engineers’ vigilance, but it is not made to support him.

It is not his hiding place—in a certain state, he’d go much higher than this—it is Niesha’s.

He reaches the muzzle of the pipe, her figure outlined against the background of the city and the canyon, dressed, as she often is when at home, simply, in undyed cloth. Her hair is braided, the braid lying on her shoulder, her forearms unadorned by jewelry. She sighs as he comes closer and lowers himself, feet dangling over a drop of two levels, on the metal.

‘Couldn’t wait until I returned?’

He smiles. ‘Allow me to use my parental privilege and pester you about things.’

Niesha looks at him. Her face is like a knife, beautiful and dangerous; Dandolo knows what she’s capable of, the things that had been taught to her before he’d brought her here. The things he had facilitated. She still carries—and uses—the blade he’d given to her at their first meeting.

Dandolo loves her, and knows that he’s lucky to have been accepted by her. People who say that _she_ should be lucky for his finding her and taking her under his wing, understand nothing.

‘You’re getting old and mushy,’ Niesha says, mouth quirking in a smile—but it fills the hollowness of her eyes only for a moment.

‘Perhaps,’ he acquiesces. ‘Or maybe I just love my daughter.’

‘And your Technomancer?’

He sighs deliberately loudly. ‘Why is that everyone so concerned about my relationship with Melvin?’

‘Because we are your family, and a family’s privilege is to pester you about personal things.’

Dandolo chuckles. ‘You certainly should try to get chosen as the _Doxe_ , next time I’m voted out.’

Niesha makes a face. ‘Nah. Being locked up here instead of travelling the whole world? No way I’d ever agree to that.’

Even though, Dandolo knows, she misses Noctis badly whenever she’s away.

He turns slightly to her, and she leans with her back to his chest. She’s not a fiercely angry thin kid anymore—tall, with her shoulders wider from fighting, she’s still fierce and still angry, but she knows how to use it as a wind to her sails now. And yet still he towers over her and wants to protect her, and still he’s scared to mess this us somehow.

‘I can’t write,’ Niesha says after a while, voice quiet. She taps the wide band on his forearm that holds the sleeves of his tunic from falling and getting in the way. It’s not the first time that his daughter encounters this silence inside herself—and they both know it doesn’t appear without a reason. That this is not, exactly, why her eyes are so hollow, why she’s here, why Dandolo knew to seek her in one of her hiding places.

Dandolo closes his arms around her.

He wonders whether it is like this for all parents: the fear to project oneself onto the child and burden them with one’s failures and dreams. The fear that one is blissfully unaware that the child is in pain.

Niesha shivers. ‘She hates me.’

Dandolo tightens his hold. He wishes he could take all the pains away, or impart some profound wisdom—but the truth is, he stumbles through life just like his daughter does. It’s that he’s been doing it longer.

A sob wracks Niesha’s body, sudden like a knife-strike. ‘She hates me, because I have you and Fran and Pipi and everyone, and she has had no-one for most of her life, and she’s been torn from her home and she’s...’

It’s not often that Niesha cries. It’s not that she’s ‘tough’—which usually means something very unhealthy—or unable to cry, it’s that she has people to confide in before the crisis strikes, it’s that she’s brilliant and strong and...

But all that means little when one’s heart weeps, Dandolo knows.

He rocks her as she clings to his arms, sobs escaping her in gasps. Her tears wet the blue of his tunic.

‘Is it wrong?’ Niesha asks, voice small. ‘I’m older. I’ve had all this, and... What right do I have to tell her anything?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says with sincerity. ‘You know her better than I, and I won’t pretend to understand everything. But maybe she’s scared. Lost. Angry not with you, exactly, but with unfairness of the world. Of things that happened to her and keep happening.’

He nearly eases the hold on his daughter when she strikes his arm lightly. ‘You are doing this mind-thing. Leading me to see similarities between her and myself, as I used to be.’

Dandolo chuckles. ‘I apologise. I might have been a political bird for too long. But as the whole city can see, I’m not very good when it comes to matters of a bleeding heart. Let time do its healing for a while.’ He leans back. ‘I’ve messed up your braid. May I redo it?’

Niesha sniffles—inelegant, not at all the spy-master of Noctis or the artistic singer, but a woman in love and aching. ‘Yes. Fix your own mess, папа.’

He pushes himself up the pipe, moves the armbands higher and sets on his task. When he separates hair strands for braiding, Niesha begins to sing.


End file.
